One frail flower the less
by nicky69
Summary: AU first meeting.WARNING:DEATH FIC! One of our boys dies, if this squicks you out, please walk away now.AN:I wanted to say a huge thank you to syrenslure who most generously offered her services as a beta for this story, she did a wonderful job. Any mista


**This story was originally written for the Sentinel Thursday community on LJ. The Prompt was # 44 DEPREVATION**

**WARNING: This is AU and features the death of one of our guys; if that squicks you our please walk away now.**

It took all of Jim Ellison's considerable self-control to walk away the group of people behind him; to leave then untouched. His hands itched with the need to grab a hold of them and shake them until their drug-fogged minds were capable of comprehending the enormity of their failure.

In the eyes of the law their actions were, at best, borderline criminal, but morally they were unforgivable. The sorry thing about it was that they couldn't even see that. They couldn't or wouldn't accept responsibility for their own actions or lack thereof.

Inwardly he seethed with fury, forcing himself to swallow his rage. 'Fuck! Seven days!' They hadn't even noticed that the kid was actually missing for four days, each of them thinking that he was with someone else, was someone else's responsibility. Even after his disappearance had been eventually noticed, they had balked at involving the police, preferring not to involve the 'pigs,' as one of their little quiche-eating, pot-smoking number had informed him. In the end, it had taken them a further three days to get off their asses and file a file a missing persons report, but by then it was already too late. One day too late, it might as well have been a lifetime.

At least he had a name now. They'd recognized the boy from the picture that Dan had taken; having someone come down to the PD for an official identification was merely a formality. However, there was no satisfaction to be found in this new development; instead, it filled him with bitter frustration.

For all their talk of free spirited independence and emotional respect, they had failed to cherish that which was most precious and ultimately most vulnerable. As he settled into the driver's seat, a vision of corruption and shattered innocence flashed briefly across his vision. With a vicious stab of his foot, Jim set his vehicle in motion, grateful to leave this place and these people behind.

Through the years, Jim had seen more than his fair share of the ugliness that lay hidden beneath the thin veneer that passed for civilisation. 'Man's inhumanity to man,' it was termed in a plethora of news bites and social science essays, but neither the words themselves, nor the distant, academic understanding of students or teachers, could fully capture the horror or the brutality of the acts it described.

Jim had his first real encounter with the darkness that could lead a man to acts of savagery and violence while he was serving with the Rangers. Under the guise of patriotism, or in the heat of religious zeal, foul deeds abounded, yet he had never come face to face with real evil until he joined the ranks of Cascade PD. It wasn't the cloven-hoofed, pointy-tailed variety; it was more insidious, an everyday evil - the type that turned a loving husband into an abusive drunk and wife beater. It was the type of vicious malevolence that hid behind the smiling face of a regular god fearing man - one with a good job, a nice home and a twisted appreciation of the pain of others.

Jim thought that he had seen it all, that he had become inured to the worst that man had to offer his fellow, but what he had found the previous day had stolen his very breath away, had threatened to empty his stomach in a rush of acid and bile.

The child's body had been discovered by a homeless man. Seeking shelter from what seemed like the perpetual Cascade downpour; he had ventured into an abandoned house on the outskirts of town and stumbled onto the horrendous scene.

He hadn't been able to walk away from his discovery and forget the horror that he had seen frozen on the boy's fragile face. It had found an echo in his own battered soul, and it was that horror that sent him running out into the cold night, praying to his childhood's lost saints, his tears and sobs of grief lost amidst the deluge. Life on the streets had hardened the homeless man's soul, and stripped him of the illusions of his youth, but it had not inured him to the desecration of one so innocent, so young. It had overcome his reluctance to get involved and he had run straight to the cops.

The first thing that Jim had noticed upon entering the house was the damp scent of mildew; it dominated everything, hanging in the air, like the ghost of better days. Underneath its omnipresent odour was the more subtle scent of human corruption, and Jim tried not to breath too deeply. As he progressed deeper into the house, Jim passed other officers, some couldn't meet his eyes, their own overcome with sadness, while others nodded a greeting and meet his gaze with blazing intensity, their message unmistakable.

The crime scene was in the rear of the house, the dilapidated room now harshly illuminated by the portable lights of the forensics team. Nothing was hidden in their glare. The first thing he saw was the child's dirty, sock-clad foot peeking out from the far side of the rusty, filthy bed.

'God! So damn small.'

Jim felt his jaw clench, his shoulders and chest going rigid and tight in reaction and he had to force himself to push his rage down inside. He had a job to do and emotions would only hinder him. He would pay the price for the control that he wielded so expertly now; later, in private, he would rage at the injustice, the ugliness of the world. Alone, he would cry bitter tears of sadness and regret for what had been lost. In solitude he would mourn death, as in solitude he lived.

His face a mask, Jim stepped further into the room. The coroner had finished his grim task and Jim was free to examine the scene. With carefully concealed trepidation, Jim approached the bed, taking a moment to note its rumpled appearance, but his focus was on what lay beyond it. He unconsciously held his breath as the child's body came into view, only to release it in an explosive sigh, more a groan of distress than anything else.

The boy was beautiful, or at least he had been, once.

Lying crumpled on the grimy wooden floorboards, his tiny body looking broken and frail in the unforgiving light, the boy had a waiflike appearance. An unruly mop of chestnut curls framed his pallid face, and Jim's gaze was drawn to his eyes. Dull and lifeless now, their cerulean hue was slowly giving way to milky white. He couldn't help thinking that in life they would have been exquisite.

His gaze travelled lower, cataloguing the obvious injuries. The kid's lip was split; the right side of his face mottled and bruised. 'He'd put up a fight,' the thought cheered him somewhat, but not for long. What he saw next wiped away any traces of cheer. Around the slender neck were multiple ligature marks, and copious amounts of bruising. Some of the marks looked partially healed, others fresh and Jim had a sickening feeling that the end, when it came for this child, had been torturous. He tried not to imagine the terror and the endless struggle for breath that this child had endured, and only when his hard won emotional control started to crack did he drag his attention away from those wounds.

Lower still he tracked, unable to see any obvious injuries on the boy's torso because his clothing was in the way. He was dressed, and for that small mercy Jim gave silent thanks. He wore a faded, Save the Rainforest T-shirt- somewhat incongruous on a child his age- and a pair of threadbare, faded jeans. His sneakers were missing, as was one of his socks; his little toes looked defenceless in their nakedness.

His wrists were bound with an electrical cord.

Jim vowed that he would find the sick son of a bitch who hurt this little one before he could harm another. He swore that he would stop him. There in that mildewed, lonely bedroom, with the scent of death hanging in the air he made a silent promise to himself and to this unknown child. He would not remain nameless and his killer would not go unpunished.

"I'll get whoever did this to you, kid. If it's the last thing I do, I'll make him pay."

That thought in mind, Jim had turned away and went to work.

That thought echoed in his mind as he gave name to the face in his mind. Still angry at the people who had left a child to basically fend for himself, Jim stopped off at the morgue to pick up the autopsy report and to let the coroner know they now had a name for their little boy lost.

One of the hippies had ventured the information; he was Naomi's kid. A bright and lively child by all accounts, she had left him in their dubious charge while she went off to wander the world seeking enlightenment She didn't even know that her baby was dead yet. Jim didn't know whether to pity her loss or to curse her selfishness. In the end it didn't matter; her son was still dead and nothing would change that.

Dan had the autopsy results waiting for him by the time he arrived, and the file, while disturbing to read, thankfully held no additional horrors. The kid had been dead approximately a day; he had been starved and beaten, and ultimately strangled but he had not been sexually abused as Jim had feared. It was the only blessing in this dark and tragic case.

Three months later they found the killer. Real life police work wasn't anything like the TV shows. DNA results were not forthcoming in a single night, and thankfully, most criminals were not Machiavellian geniuses. In the end they caught the bastard because he was in the system - not from a prior arrest, but because of his school safe kit; he was only 17 years old.

That knowledge made Jim sick to his stomach. Kids killing kids, how did they get to this? What had happened to their society, to him, that such crimes no longer shocked him? When he'd interviewed the killer, Matthew Taylor, and asked him why he had done it, he'd looked Jim right in the eye said he'd done it for fun, because he was bored. Then he'd smiled.

He wasn't smiling anymore when he was tried and convicted as an adult, and sent to jail for life.

Neither was Jim, later that day, when he stood before a simple headstone- a headstone bought and paid for by the members of Cascade PD. It was a lasting testament to how much one friendless little boy had touched their hearts. Of his mother there was still no sign.

"Well we got him, chief. He won't ever be able to hurt anyone ever again."

The words sounded hollow even to his own ears, and pitifully inadequate in the circumstances. Just meaningless puffs of sound on the still air, they had no real value. There was no comfort to be found in them, no relief. What was done was done, and nothing he said or did could change that.

Jim reached out to caress smooth stone, his fingers trailing slowly over the inscription.

FOR one extinguished light

Of Love, all heaven is night;

For one frail flower the less,

The world a wilderness

He couldn't help but wonder what had been lost to the world with this one child's death. He'd never get the chance to grow up now, never go dancing, never fall in love. He'd never experience the completeness, and the joy, that is to be found in safe haven of a lover's arms, never be that safe haven for another. Jim's heart grieved for so much unrealised potential, what an appalling waste, what a crime.

Who knew what this child would have become?

Would the world now be a lesser place for his passing? In his heart Jim knew the answer and its bitter truth brought tears to eyes long dried to the injustice of the world. His hand stilled, and dropped away. Only the sombre, muted sky bore witness to his declaration of sorrow.

"I'm sorry, Blair. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me, when it would have made a difference, but I'm here now."

Untold hours later the encroaching cold finally drove Jim from his solitary vigil; night's sheltering darkness shielded his retreat, and he never looked back. In the years to come, he would often remember that day. Sometimes, he would find himself trying to picture what Blair would look like now. If only…if only.

They say it only takes one person to make a difference. Jim cursed the day that Matthew Taylor was ever born, cursed him for depriving the world of one such as Blair Sandburg. Who knew what he would have become?


End file.
